I’ve been working for the past several days, in between bouts of packing, on developing the new Roundbottom site design. You can check out a static HTML preview here. None of the links work, so don’t click on them, but mouse over them for fun, especially at the top. For newer readers, Roundbottom is my steampunk photography/short fiction project, centered around a steampunk naturalist and his adventures.
A couple of things to note about this new design. The flash video of the gears is still comp and needs to be purchased as well as compressed. It sits at 2 megs right now which is just way too heavy a file for something silly like that. I should be able to reduce its file size considerably once I buy the video.
I’m using, as in the first design, SiFR font replacement on the headers, and SWIFR to style the main images and the gravatar images. These are flash based technologies that are great uses of Flash. They both should degrade fairly gracefully, although the main header font is ridiculously huge without the styling.
I’ve been grabbing resources from all over the place for this one, hence the planned “design credits” page. It’ll include a link back to my portfolio site, but as well list all the free resources I used in the design and link to them.
You might notice the Foundation stuff. That’s laying the groundwork for the Roundbottom club, basically. More on that later. It’s an experiment that will sink or swim depending on a variety of things. The other thing you might notice is the Encyclopedia link. My intent is to set up a wiki page for keeping track of Roundbottom’s world, cast of characters, and so on. I am pretty sure I will open up editing of this to the fans. I’m thinking hard about ways to encourage audience participation here. I want the comment section to be a delightful place of steampunk characters not of my creation. Hence the “More Steampunk” section. We’ll see how that works.
Overall, I think I’ve vastly improved upon the old design. Cross browser compatibility should be relatively cleared up. The images can be larger and more detailed. And the design really says “clockpunk” now.
Please do let me know if you notice any major glaring errors in rendering. There are a few things that IE 6 doesn’t get right, but for the most part, it looks okay there. Obviously, more modern browsers should handle it better.
I can’t wait to get this thing up and running and to start rolling out new, fresh steamy content. I’ve got some great storylines lined up for this summer that I think you’re really going to enjoy.
One last thing! Design type folks, if you have any technical questions about how I did something or why I did something, do please ask! I’d love to talk shop on this one.
The Roundbottom project is in full swing around here, with large chunks of my profits from web design going into expenses. This weekend, I miraculously somehow stumbled upon a going out of business sale at a costume store in Denver. I was trying to find replica revolvers, and this came up. Today was the last day, and everything was 70% off. Needless to say, Sarah and I went hog wild. I’ll be uploading some photos of what we scored later on, but here’s a list:
One men’s frock coat (black)
two pairs suspenders
white cravat
one set of kid gloves (red)
one set of spurs
Asian-styled parasol
gray derby hat
black Bowler hat (vintage)
civil war cap
one cross between a cowboy hat and a top hat (don’t know what the actual name is)
two pairs men’s Victorian pinstripe slacks (one size for me, one smaller)
three men’s tuxedo shirts, varying sizes
Renaissance bodice (red)
Men’s vest (silver)
18th century men’s shirt
three vintage turn of the century women’s blouses
three blouses that are period, but not vintage
five skirts of varying sizes, peticoat styles, etc
one set of military goggles (at military surplus store later)
All this was acquired for $250. Which seems like a lot, but we’ll get dozens of shoots out of this stuff. Woohoo!
So a note to you steampunkers–keep your eyes open for costume shops going out of business in your areas. Great deals can be had at these closures.
Does the New York Times article on Steampunk mean the genre/fashion craze has made the high water mark and will begin to recede from here? What is the shelf-life of an aesthetic movement, and for that matter, what is the sociological force behind this particular movement?
It’s a Stylistic Rebellion
Particularly as an aesthetic movement, steampunk is popular primarily with an under 30 set. This is a generation that has rarely owned hand-crafted objects. Our consumer goods have been mass manufactured, extruded plastic blocks. Aesthetic appeal was rarely a consideration, and even if it was, each product was exactly identical to the other. You could try and stand out through your particular fashion sense and consumer good choices, but more often than not, you ended up looking like a thousand others.
Steampunk is a middle finger to the iPod, but it’s also a blown kiss. This movement says, “yes” to technology and science, but also “does it have to look so antiseptic?” The design aesthetic of Apple appeals to many, as evidenced by their stock prices, but it’s somewhat repulsive to others. And for a generation who has rarely owned hand-crafted objects, the attraction of taking something and modifying it, crafting it, until it is yours and unique–is very strong. The Victorian period was not the last time things were made by hand, but it’s an aesthetic distantly enough removed from the modern that it feels different, more so than the 40s, 50s, 60s, etc. Steampunk is brown and brass, in contrast to the whites and blacks of modern design. It’s metal and wood, not plastic. It’s lace, not lycra.
It is also a callback to a period when objects looked exactly as if they were capable of what they could do. A square block of plastic does not convey its ability to communicate over vast distances. There’s nothing inherently communicative about it’s shape. A steampunk ray gun, on the other hand, cannot be confused for much of anything else. Technology then was cruder, but you could tell what something did by looking at it. You could see the inner workings, and those inner workings were much easier to understand. I think most people feel they could learn to put watch pieces together. Not very many believe they could learn to manufacture circuit boards.
Has it peaked?
Unless you’re invested semi-professionally in the popularity of the genre as I am, then this question doesn’t probably matter to you. Having spent most of my spring preparing a series of images and storylines that draw heavily from this aesthetic, I am a little concerned that the popularity of steampunk is about to peak, if it hasn’t already. If the activity on the steamfashion group on Livejournal is any indication, popularity has already begun to wane. I recently rejoined this group, and I have found that posts to it are increasingly infrequent. Now it may just be that everyone is too busy making things, but I suspect some have already moved on to other fixations. After all, you could make a strong case that the fashion-aspect of steampunk evolved out of Goth culture, and so it’s not unreasonable to believe that it will continue to evolve and fracture off into other sub-cultures. We already have terms like clockpunk and dieselpunk, even if these terms don’t have the same traction in the zeitgeist that steampunk has right now.
The nice thing about a genre and an aesthetic that is based heavily on a historical period is, it probably never really goes out of fashion. There will always be some small subset of fans interested in the time period. Let’s face it: steampunk is freaking cool, and it’s going to take something pretty drastic to change that. Even if that does change, it’s not like being uncool has ever stopped fans from liking something.
I’ve got a few more blackbird shots in reserve, but I figured you would rather see anything else at this point. So I’m back to some of the raw shots from the last steampunk shoot. Consider these outtakes, because they have no post or effects. They’re good images though, at least, I think so.
I did a top secret shoot last night that I really wish I could show off, but instead, I’ll tell you how you can see it later…
Hi! My name is Jeremiah Tolbert, but you can call me Jeremy. I am a fantasy and science fiction writer, photographer, and web designer living in Northern Colorado. I am currently starting a new job and cannot take freelance work at this time. Drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. I love hearing from new people and I now have a lot more time to chat.
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